


no easy way from the earth to the stars

by fitzroysquare



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dimension Cannon, Episode: s01e10 Out of Time, Stars, Tenth Doctor Era, mentions of Boeshane Peninsula
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28923354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitzroysquare/pseuds/fitzroysquare
Summary: When the Doctor passes through Cardiff, Jack doesn’t chase after him. The reason why starts with Rose Tyler stumbling out a dark Cardiff alley in a flash of light.
Relationships: Jack Harkness & Rose Tyler
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	no easy way from the earth to the stars

**Author's Note:**

> takes place after s1e10 Out of Time

When Rose Tyler sets off Torchwood’s rift detector by stumbling out of a dark Cardiff alley in a flash of bright light, Jack Harkness thinks that maybe Christmas is saved after all.

“Rose!” he yells in glee and partial confusion when he recognises her face. “What? How? I thought...”

Next to him, Gwen, the only Torchwood Three member to join him in responding to the rift alert, looks on quizzically at the scene before her but takes it all in stride, already accustomed to the necessity of that when dealing with Jack.

The appearance of Rose falling out of a dark Cardiff alley is unexpected, but between dying from carbon monoxide poisoning and dealing with a surly, broken-hearted Owen, Jack gladly welcomes the surprise return of Rose back into his life. Realising she’s _alive_ and not mixed in with the ashes of metallic Cyberman parts and the remains of what used to be Torchwood One employees is enough to make his heart dance with unbridled joy.

Rose, it seems, shares the same exuberant happiness that he feels, throwing her arms around him the first moment she’s able to.

“Jack!” she cries out as if saying his name makes him more real. “What are you doing in Cardiff?”

“What are _you_ doing in Cardiff?” he shoots back. “Last I heard, you were in Canary Wharf. Your name was even on the list of the dead, too.”

A flurry of emotions passes through Rose’s face and Jack thinks he can make out grief and regret mixed in among a number of other unidentifiable ones.

“Oh,” she says softly. “It’s...actually a long story. Something best told over a cuppa. Do you know anything like that around here?”

Jack’s face breaks into a soft smile, different from his usual blinding, self-assured grin. “Yeah, I know somewhere we can go. C’mon. And if you decide you want coffee instead, I know a guy who makes the most _fantastic_ cup. He’s cute too.” He mock whispers the last part as if telling a grand secret.

Jack grabs Rose’s hand, leading her to the Torchwood SUV where it’s parked in the middle of the street with no regard for other drivers.

“Also,” he says as he pulls her along. “Meet Gwen Cooper- she used to be a copper. Bright yellow vest and size nines. She was so cute, you should’ve seen it.” 

“Oi, listen here you bastard,” Gwen shoots back sharply, though it’s clear from the lack of edge in her tone and humour dancing in the depths of her eyes that she’s not insulted at all. “I don’t wear size nines!”

With that setting the tone, the three of them chatter all the way back to the Hub, and the SUV becomes filled with the sound of Rose and Gwen swapping “first day on the new job” stories that inevitably showcase the disaster that Torchwood, in any universe, is. Jack listens, more than impressed at all of Rose’s world-saving Torchwood adventures in a parallel universe, though he would be lying if he said he wasn’t disappointed that it wasn’t a blue box and a Time Lord that had brought her to Cardiff.

The rest of the team at the Hub, however, aren’t as welcoming to the newest Torchwood visitor when they meet her, viewing Rose with a mix of suspicion and curiosity that Jack just chalks up to them still dealing with the mess that was the Sky Gypsy. Though he supposes that it also doesn’t help that he doesn’t have the words to explain exactly who Rose Tyler is to him, only managing to convey all his turbulent emotions and thoughts into calling her “an old friend”.

While Jack is surprised that there actually are people in the world who don’t instantly fall in love with Rose, he doesn’t let that dampen his spirits in the slightest. Jack revels in Rose’s presence, soaking up her bright smile and shining eyes like a man who hasn’t seen the sun in a hundred years. And given that Jack has spent most of the past century in cold, wet Cardiff, he might as well be.

As a boy who grew up on a planet with a desert climate, Jack’s adjustment to the chill of Welsh weather is one of those things only done out of necessity and circumstance. There’s nothing tying Cardiff to the Boeshane Peninsula, which is why Jack supposes out of everything in the city it’s the glow of the stars he gravitates to the most. They’re the only things that are even remotely familiar to him on this planet and in this century. 

It’s the part of him that longs for the familiar which makes Jack sorely tempted to take Rose’s dimension cannon from around her neck when she shows it off during her long-winded explanation that she had promised to give earlier, just so he can use the parts to fix his broken vortex manipulator. He refrains, knowing that the cannon is too important in the grand scheme of things, but the small part of him that yearns to travel among the stars again aches. For someone who once had all of time and space at his fingertips, Earth is small with Cardiff even smaller, and Jack keenly feels the absence of freedom like it’s a phantom pain.

But just being in Rose’s presence again eases the nauseating weight pressing on his chest and Jack figures that Rose is as good an omen as the appearance of the north star on the darkest night or the flash of a guiding light destined to lead him straight to the Doctor. With Rose back in his life again, he only expects good things from here on out. After all, Jack remembers that the last time she unexpectedly entered his life in a dramatic fashion led to the start of an adventure he wouldn’t ever take back for the world.

So when the Rift detector picks up on something coming through the rift, Jack jumps at the chance to show how his universe’s Torchwood gets it done and invites Rose along to pick up the latest object that the rift spat out somewhere on the grass of Cardiff’s cliffs. It’s nightfall, but Rose shows no hint of exhaustion and immediately claims the front passenger seat on the way there, which makes Jack smile with glee but only serves to make Owen grumble under his breath. It’s nothing a little good-natured banter can’t fix, however, and as Jack sees Rose to his left and the stars to his right, he tries to remember the last time he was this happy and fails.

Even the atomic accelerator partly fused with a 273rd-century fusion drive that they find waiting for them on the cliffs can’t dampen Jack’s mood. Having dealt with an atomic accelerator and a fusion drive before, albeit separately, Jack knows that the resulting blast radius is too large for them to try detonating it safely and too delicate to try transferring it back to the Hub. He also knows, from experience, that defusing it is going to be one hell of a job. But just like everything else in his life, he knows he has to try. So he straightens his back, claps his hands, and turns to his team with a carefully pasted-on grin.

“So,” Jack says, looking around at the group, the very picture of confidence. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

* * *

What happens in the next thirty seconds seems to happen in a single moment.

Despite all of Jack, Rose, and the rest of the Torchwood team’s best efforts, absolutely nothing goes according to plan, not even the back-up plan to the back-up plan. It’s how Jack finds himself frantically attempting to defuse the accelerator-fusion drive while Tosh is beside him in dead concentration, her hands fiddling over her prototype of a portable cryo-chamber while Gwen provides a helping hand. He can see Ianto and Owen out of the corners of his eyes, trying to find other options, but the passage of time gifts them nothing but the increasing rush of silent dread. Jack’s hands continue to work on the accelerator but his eyes already see the image of himself waking up in the burnt crater of what was once Cardiff alone.

The invisible clock in everyone’s mind ticks down to the space where last-ditch efforts are tried and tested, so Jack is caught off-guard but not totally surprised when Rose shoves him away from the accelerator. He falls, unbalanced, and turns around ready to see Rose save the world like she’s done so many times before.

It’s only when he sees Rose reach for the accelerator with one hand and the dimension cannon with the other that his feelings of contained alarm turn to unbridled panic. Jack can see the grimness in her eyes telling him that she has a plan, but that it’s one where it all counts on her being able to time her jump so the accelerator is set off as she crosses the void between the universes.

It could work, Jack knows, but the chances of Rose living through something like that is slim and he adamantly refuses to let her go out like that, especially when there’s so much more world-saving she still has left to do. So he reaches towards her, hoping to hitch a ride with her through the void in the hopes that his body can at least provide some protection from the devastating blast that is sure to follow. Even if that doesn’t work, Jack is determined to be there at the end if there is one, knowing from too many personal experiences that dying alone is a terribly lonely thing that no one deserves.

He reaches, but he’s too far away and too unbalanced from Rose’s shove. Desperate, Jack lunges, knowing that the jump is moments away.

He lunges, but instead of grabbing Rose, his hand hits the button activating the dimension cannon where it lays around her neck. Jack’s eyes widen, terror rushing through him.

His eyes widen, but then they shut as a blinding light fills his vision.

In the split second of time that Jack is forced to shut his eyes, a rush of emotions flows through him: fear, dread, nausea, hope. The light fades away and Jack’s eyes open, as do the other members of the Torchwood team around him. He sees Rose, standing in front of him, and Jack stares at the person she has become.

Her body, translucent in some places and shimmering in others, would be the most beautiful thing Jack has ever seen if it wasn’t so horrible.

He sees the nebulous glow of her skin and knows that when his hand hit Rose’s dimension cannon, it activated it at the same time as the accelerator-fusion drive, keeping the blast contained to the small moment of time when Rose was both in the universe and not, while also reducing Rose down to her atomic elements and then fusing it all back together.

The atomic elements of a human, also known as stardust.

“Rose?” Jack asks, his voice low. Around the two of them, the rest of the Torchwood team watch silently, unsure of what to say or do. Gwen, in particular, watches with her hands up by her face, trying desperately to think of new plans or actions. But seconds of horrible silence fill the open air as they wait, the only thing left that they can do.

“The stars,” Rose, or what was once Rose, finally breathes out, with her head turned to the sky and eyes unfocused. “They’re so beautiful. Just glittering out there.”

“I know,” he replies, itching to reach out and grab Rose’s hand despite knowing that it would only slide through. “But so is down here. Earth. The people. They need you, Rose Tyler.”

With every moment that passes without a response, Jack can see that every second ticking away at the clock is taking Rose with it, so he continues his litany of pleas, babbling away at reasons for her to stay. He weaves a constellation of promises to no avail and offers bombastic bribes to no response.

“The stars,” she says again, smiling and speaking to no one in particular. “It’ll be nice to be with them again. Up there,”

“Then take me with you,” Jack finally chokes out, his voice shaking in places as he finally articulates the painful yearning for the stars that he had so carefully kept locked away in the depths of his heart throughout the years. “I’ve been stuck, here in Cardiff, for so long. Take me with you. Please.” 

The logical part of him knows that by this point it’s futile to ask, but like with everything else in his life, he tries anyway. 

It’s true that after a century stuck on a lonely, little planet that barely knows the wonder of its own backyard, Jack wants out. He’s tired of being the eternal caretaker of a city that would most likely shun him if they knew where he was from or if they saw all of the people throughout his long life that he couldn’t help but love. 

He sees the stars burning above him in the sky calling to the galaxy of impossibilities beneath his veins and feels the scorching intensity of their glow beckoning him upwards and away. He sees Rose, the transient shooting star of his life, and feels like the dust she’s destined to leave behind.

Jack’s about to open his mouth to speak again, to try begging or bribing for the sixth, seventh, eighth time, but he doesn’t get a chance. In a whirlpool of stardust and twinkling lights, Rose takes off across the cliffs, her body gliding above the ground and getting higher with every moment.

Jack takes off too, his feet pounding across the grass as he chases after her. He can hear the shouts of the others behind him as they begin to give chase also, but his only focus is on the glittering outline of Rose that seems to wink in and out of existence.

Jack’s greatcoat flows out behind him and he would look like an action star saving the day at the last possible moment if not for the look of anguish piercing across his face and the fact that the moment for saving was already dead and gone.

As much as Jack tries, he alone cannot overcome the laws of gravity and the natural order of things. So when Jack reaches the edge of the cliffs the only thing he can do is watch as Rose goes over and up, dispersing into shimmering embers of stardust in the sky and joining the soft glows of once comforting stars that now seem to mock him with their light. They seem to burn brighter, just for a moment, but all he can see in the night sky are the celestial remnants of a million exit wounds.

There’s nothing left for Jack to do but scream all of his pain into the void.

* * *

After Abaddon lives and dies while Jack dies and lives, he gladly welcomes the prospect of a hot cup of coffee. That’s where he finds himself, standing in the middle of the Hub and waiting for the others to return, when he hears the tell-tale sound of the Tardis materialising. It’s a beautiful sound, that whooshing noise and inevitable laughter of a Time Lord trailing behind it. Every molecule of Jack’s body starts vibrating with anticipation at the sound and he smiles, instinctively taking a step forward and mentally running down all the things he needs to grab before he gives chase.

But then Jack remembers the events of the past months and instead of running after the Doctor and finally getting the answers he so desperately wants, he stops where he is. After a long, silent moment filled with hesitation and doubt, Jack turns around and walks into his office, kicking his door shut with a forceful swing of his leg. He pulls down the blinds covering the glass and takes a few moments to lean his head against the closed door, shutting his eyes tight and taking a few deep breaths before turning around and reaching for a bottle of liquor in his cabinet.

He pours himself a generous amount of bourbon, gulping it down in a single swallow before refilling his glass with another generous helping. He takes another drink, listens to the sound of the Tardis dematerialising, and feels the burn of the alcohol slide down his throat as the pitiful supernova explosion of his heart leaves only the gaping wound of a black hole in its place. Closing his eyes again, Jack sinks into his chair, and lets his head fall into his hands.

Jack can’t face the Doctor. Not when he killed Rose Tyler.

**Author's Note:**

> basically I asked myself if there was anything that would make Jack willingly not run after the doctor in s1... and this happened


End file.
